On 5/17/07, Ramakrishnan Sundaram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Isn't "India" a Victorian construct? Even today, Indians identify themselves primarily by smaller groupings, except when playing cricket or waging war.
What a simple, profound statement. To see the veracity of this, just watch any two Indians meeting somewhere in a public space abroad. There is no sense of Indian-ness, just the awkwardness of, say, a Telugu man trying hard not to identify himself with a Punjabi woman...and vice versa. Very often, they will not even acknowledge each other. Many people from other countries find this hard to understand; one has to realize the plurality of India to try and understand it oneself, as another Indian. How often do I hear one part of India looking down on another in a feeling of superiority, either in the field of commerce, or academics, or cuisine, or just plain hard work. "Those...... (insert "Bengalis", "Tamils", "Biharis", "Marathis", or whatever part of the country that you wish to) are....(insert some perjorative adverb like "lazy", "arrogant","insular", "dumb"...) is such a common statement. And the communities themselves have fissiparous tendencies.There is a saying that where there are two Bengalis, there is one Bengali Association; where there are three Bengalis, there are two Bengali Associations." (Well, actually, the saying talks about Durga Puja pandals...) So....while this thread blames the Victorians for our present prissy-prudish moral values(there, that's a value judgement), we also probably have them to thank for this loose federation called India, that is still a valid identity in our minds....and we also have to thank the Indian Freedom struggle, which, for a while, really did overcome our regionalism and parochialism, and evolved the concept of India as a nation. And...it was interesting to watch the White Man's Take of ...er..."lost temples, shrouded in secrecy" ...and realize that the narrator is talking about Madurai and Thanjavur! Deepa. On 5/17/07, Ramakrishnan Sundaram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Shyam Visweswaran said the following on 17/05/2007 19:35: > What exactly are the confines of Indian culture? Isn't "India" a Victorian construct? Even today, Indians identify themselves primarily by smaller groupings, except when playing cricket or waging war. Ram -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) iD8DBQFGTHw9RQoToz9njMgRCI5xAKD8D9Lr5Ti5/Ldr8caOZ7x0DS556gCeKByH Lgs5OOrUIM1ACNuXZubPIKE= =U6Kw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
